Radeon HD 6000 Series GPUs are equipped with UVD3 (Universal Video Decoder, 3rd generation) that can decode MPEG-4 MVC (Multi-View Codec) (Blu-ray 3D codec) and MPEG-4 Part 2 codec (DivX and Xvid), and finally supports VLD for MPEG-2 (has been advertised for a long time, but never been implemented; AMD now officially admitted that it is not implemented in UVD/UVD2!).

This means that, for example, up to four 1920x1200@60Hz displays are supported over a single DP connector with a MST (Multi-Stream Transport) hub (DP 1.2 versions expected in 2011) or daisy-chain. Thus the reference HD 6800 card, without a special "EyeFinity6" edition, supports up to 6 displays (the GPU has 6 graphics controllers like the previous Cypress GPU). Some possible configurations are:

mainly applied to video playback, video transcoding and gaming. So they are basically former ATI Avivo Technology, ATI Stream Technology applied to transcoding, and application to gaming such as physics effects and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

So we can now play stereoscopic 3D games with a Radeon HD 6800 Series graphics card and a HDMI 1.4a display (via DDD and iZ3D’s stereoscopic gaming drivers), but only up to 720p@60Hz (per eye) due to HDMI 1.4a limitation. We will be able to play stereoscopic 3D games at 1080p@60Hz (per eye) via DisplayPort 1.2 when monitor vendors begin incorporating DisplayPort 1.2 sometime next year (but it's PC monitors that support DisplayPort; we won't see a CE displays supporting DisplayPort in a foreseeable future).

- HD 6800 Series (Barts) was released on October 21, 2010.
- HD 6950, 6970 (Cayman) will be released in December 2010.
- HD 6990 (Antilles) (Cayman x 2) will be released in Q1 2011.
- HD 6700 Series is a rework of HD 5700 Series.
- HD 6600 Series (Turks), HD 6500 Series (Turks) and HD 6450 (Caicos) will be released in Q1 2011.

- HD 6800 Series (Barts) was released on October 21, 2010.
- HD 6950, 6970 (Cayman) will be released in November 2010.
- HD 6990 (Antilles) (Cayman x 2) will be released in Q4 2010.
- HD 6700 Series is absent? (HD 5700 Series continues.)
- HD 6600 Series, HD 6500 Series and HD 6350 will be released in Q1 2011.

"6800s" are really 6700s. This is from the Guru3D review of 6850 & 6870:

"...what we have been looking at today should have really been labeled Series 6700 as the fastest products, which you'd expect to be placed in the 6800 series, still need to be released."

A rumor was that HD 5700 Series would be rebranded as HD 6700, but this won't happen, according to AMD's slide.

There are several guesses why Barts became HD 6800. AMD said, AMD wanted HD #800 Series to stay in the $150-$250 segment, HD 5800 Series was not normal [too pricey, higher performance], HD 6800 Series just went back to the normal track (this slide).

If you have a 5xxx card already (I have a 5670 for HTPC use) is there any reason to consider upgrading to the 6xxx? The 3D option is nice but I don't have a 3D TV and don't see getting one anytime soon, would that be the only real upgrade from an HTPC standpoint?

Well then, I don't see a reason to upgrade the graphics. UVD3's support for Divx, Xvid, VLD for MPEG-2 is unimportant, and all the video post-processing tasks are done by generic stream processors (HD 5670 has plenty of them), for which only the driver's maturity is important.

The software is known under codename "VPP" i.e. Video Power Pack [we also heard "Video Processing Pack" being mentioned, probably a deliberate distraction in an order to control who leaked the information]. Primary goal for VPP is to significantly improve video quality and video transcoding, enhancing the consumer experience by improving the already high level of video playback and avoid errors.

The problem AMD had with AVIVO HD software was the unpleasant fact that AVIVO is old, hard-coded software that could not properly utilize the current generation of DirectX 11 hardware, often producing inexplicable errors. Thus, we were not surprised to hear that AMD is working on complete rework of current Catalyst driver stack, as AMD was unable to properly address issues they were facing internally. Read - legacy software was also to blame for the poor scalability of AMD Radeon cards when compared to their competition, i.e. how two $200 cards would outperform two AMD's $400 cards in their respective multi-GPU configurations.

However, all of that is now history - it looks like Rick Bergman received open hands to fix everything that was wrong with AMD's GPU division, and the company is finally dedicating financial and human resources to make that happen. We won't go into exact details how we learned of experiences that some AMD engineers faced in order to bring great features to the market, busy fighting with the engineers from older-school which shot their chance of fame long time ago.

In any case, that "old school" lost the war and now ex-ATI folk are making sure Fusion gets executed properly.

I currently own a Radeon 4890 OC (Vapor-x). It's quiet, fast and altogether solid but it doesn't support bitstreaming. My only complaint is the whole realtek vs ati HDMI driver thing.

1. Between ATI UVD3 and Nvidia VP4 which provides the best picture quality for HTPC users?

2. Who has the better bitstreaming support between ATI and Nvidia?

3. If you were me would you buy a 6870 or the GTX460 for 50/50 gaming HTPC use?

HTPC will connect through a Pioneer 1019 to a Benq W5000 projector.

"For a consumer interested in the 3D ecosystem, the GT 430 is definitely a better option than the similarly priced HD 5570. The GT 430 also brings the latest and greatest of VP4 to the table. This includes full MVC decode acceleration enabling hassle free playback of 3D Blu-Rays. The GPU also scored a perfect 100% in our media streamer test suite, and had no issues with bitstreaming HD audio of any kind. Flash acceleration works very well and sites such as YouTube and Hulu benefit handsomely. Silverlight also utilizes GPU acceleration. Netflix is able to take advantage of the same."

Is this a pure software/driver upgrade Do you think it can work on older hardware (read HD 4xxx+), or is it only availble for new hardware (read 6xxx+/Fusion)?

It's just about the driver. If the story is true, then the driver (video playback part) will be optimized for newer DX11 GPUs (i.e. 5000/6000). Of course the developers will take older hardware into account.

Well then, I don't see a reason to upgrade the graphics. UVD3's support for Divx, Xvid, VLD for MPEG-2 is unimportant, and all the video post-processing tasks are done by generic stream processors (HD 5670 has plenty of them), for which only the driver's maturity is important.

Has anyone confirmed it actually does VLD for MPEG-2? Remember this was promised for the 5xxx series too and was never delivered - and it does matter for those of us who watch HD caps with low-powered cpus.

If anyone picks up a HD 6850 (I see Newegg.com has them in stock), would love to see some OC results. The memory is GDDR5, so I don't know why it wouldn't be able to OC to the levels on HD57xx cards (1200-1250 MHz = 4800-5000 MHz effective) from the default of 1000-1050 MHz and how well the core could OC? If you can get a HD 6850 and OC the core from 775MHz to 900MHz without the extra money for the HD 6870?

Edit: I'm seeing on the Guru 3D that they were able to OC the core to 897MHz (about the HD 6870), but memory only to 4400 MHz (guess I don't fully understand that since GDDR5 on HD 5770s can go to 5000 MHz as default).

If anyone picks up a HD 6850 (I see Newegg.com has them in stock), would love to see some OC results. The memory is GDDR5, so I don't know why it wouldn't be able to OC to the levels on HD57xx cards (1200-1250 MHz = 4800-5000 MHz effective) from the default of 1000-1050 MHz and how well the core could OC? If you can get a HD 6850 and OC the core from 775MHz to 900MHz without the extra money for the HD 6870?

Edit: I'm seeing on the Guru 3D that they were able to OC the core to 897MHz (about the HD 6870), but memory only to 4400 MHz (guess I don't fully understand that since GDDR5 on HD 5770s can go to 5000 MHz).

Has anyone confirmed it actually does VLD for MPEG-2? Remember this was promised for the 5xxx series too and was never delivered - and it does matter for those of us who watch HD caps with low-powered cpus.

At least if they don't deliver it now, they can't pretend their way out of it as it's clearly written on these slides, whereas before they just listed "hardware decode" or things like that which can be interpreted any way you like.

I'm pretty interested in the rumoured "VPP". It's time they finally add some really high quality scaling, chroma upsampling and colour space conversion to these drivers. It's a shame that hobbyists developers are better than the manufacturer itself at harnessing the power of these cards. Let's hope we can at last have madVR-grade quality processing and DXVA at the same time in the drivers.

AMD has already sent Cayman XT sample cards to its partners. The most likely to be called Radeon HD 6970 cards are reported to be dual-slot and quite hot, which comes at no surprise.

Cayman is not simply an improved Radeon HD 5000 architecture. It looks like AMD has invested some time and effort to tweak up the architecture and gain some more performance. They got us all here, as they were always saying that 6800 is an upgrade to 5800 architecutre, not telling us that there is 5900 series with much more power, just around the corner.

This chip looks like AMD's Fermi but at the same time, we hope that it won't go trough the same destiny and that it can stay on time for November 20ish launch.

The card is naturally faster than Radeon HD 5870, still the fastest single core part that AMD sells, and it should end up to a similar performance like current single GPU king GT100 based Geforce GTX 480. We expect that Cayman can end up slightly faster at least.

But can it beat soon to come Geforce GTX 580? That will be the real question as it looks like GTX 580 comes this year.